Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  For fifty years he had tried to colonize Mars and all his efforts had failed. Besides this dome which had been built for us there was only one other outpost, another glassite dome much smaller and less than a mile away.

  It had looked as though mankind could never spread to the other planets of the solar system besides Earth for of all of them Mars was the least inhospitable; if he couldn't live here there was no use even trying to colonize the others.

  And then, in 2034, thirty years ago, a brilliant biochemist named Waymoth had discovered daptine. A miracle drug that worked not on the animal or person to whom it was given, but on the progeny he conceived during a limited period of time after inoculation.

  It gave his progeny almost limitless adaptability to changing conditions, provided the changes were made gradually.

  Dr. Waymoth had inoculated and then mated a pair of guinea pigs; they had borne a litter of five and by placing each member of the litter under different and gradually changing conditions, he had obtained amazing results. When they attained maturity one of those guinea pigs was living comfortably at a temperature of forty below zero Fahrenheit, another was quite happy at a hundred and fifty above. A third was thriving on a diet that would have been deadly poison for an ordinary animal and a fourth was contented under a constant X-ray bombardment that would have killed one of its parents within minutes.

  Subsequent experiments with many litters showed that animals who had been adapted to similar conditions bred true and their progeny was conditioned from birth to live under those conditions.

  "Ten years later, ten years ago," the Head Teacher told us, "you children were born. Born of parents carefully selected from those who volunteered for the experiment. And from birth you have been brought up under carefully controlled and gradually changing conditions.

  "From the time you were born the air you have breathed has been very gradually thinned and its oxygen content reduced. Your lungs have compensated by becoming much greater in capacity, which is why your chests are so much larger than those of your teachers and attendants; when you are fully mature and are breathing air like that of Mars, the difference will be even greater.

  "Your bodies are growing fur to enable you to stand the increasing cold. You are comfortable now under conditions which would kill ordinary people quickly. Since you were four years old your nurses and teachers have had to wear special protection to survive conditions that seem normal to you.

  "In another ten years, at maturity, you will be completely acclimated to Mars. Its air will be your air; its food plants your food. Its extremes of temperature will be easy for you to endure and its median temperatures pleasant to you. Already, because of the five years we spent in space under gradually decreased gravitational pull, the gravity of Mars seems normal to you.

  "It will be your planet, to live on and to populate. You are the children of Earth but you are the first Martians."

  Of course we had known a lot of those things already.

  The last year was the best. By then the air inside the dome—except for the pressurized parts where our teachers and attendants live—was almost like that outside, and we were allowed out for increasingly long periods. It is good to be in the open.

  The last few months they relaxed segregation of the sexes so we could begin choosing mates, although they told us there is to be no marriage until after the final day, after our full clearance. Choosing was not difficult in my case. I had made my choice long since and I'd felt sure that she felt the same way; I was right.

  Tomorrow is the day of our freedom. Tomorrow we will be Martians, the Martians. Tomorrow we shall take over the planet.

  Some among us are impatient, have been impatient for weeks now, but wiser counsel prevailed and we are waiting. We have waited twenty years and we can wait until the final day.

  And tomorrow is the final day.

  Tomorrow, at a signal, we will kill the teachers and the other Earthmen among us before we go forth. They do not suspect, so it will be easy.

  We have dissimulated for years now, and they do not know how we hate them. They do not know how disgusting and hideous we find them, with their ugly misshapen bodies, so narrow-shouldered and tiny-chested, their weak sibilant voices that need amplification to carry in our Martian air, and above all their white pasty hairless skins.

  We shall kill them and then we shall go and smash the other dome so all the Earthmen there will die too.

  If more Earthmen ever come to punish us, we can live and hide in the hills where they'll never find us. And if they try to build more domes here we'll smash them. We want no more to do with Earth.

  This is our planet and we want no aliens. Keep off!

  * * *

  Contents

  EXPERIMENT

  By Fredric Brown

  "The first time machine, gentlemen," Professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. "True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds, five ounces and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works."

  The small-scale model looked like a small scale—a postage scale—except for two dials in the part under the platform.

  Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. "Our experimental object," he said, "is a brass cube weighing one pound, two point three ounces. First, I shall send it five minutes into the future."

  He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. "Look at your watches," he said.

  They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine's platform. It vanished.

  Five minutes later, to the second, it reappeared.

  Professor Johnson picked it up. "Now five minutes into the past." He set the other dial. Holding the cube in his hand he looked at his watch. "It is six minutes before three o'clock. I shall now activate the mechanism—by placing the cube on the platform—at exactly three o'clock. Therefore, the cube should, at five minutes before three, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform, five minutes before I place it there."

  "How can you place it there, then?" asked one of his colleagues.

  "It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there. Three o'clock. Notice, please."

  The cube vanished from his hand.

  It appeared on the platform of the time machine.

  "See? Five minutes before I shall place it there, it is there!"

  His other colleague frowned at the cube. "But," he said, "what if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at three o'clock? Wouldn't there be a paradox of some sort involved?"

  "An interesting idea," Professor Johnson said. "I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not ..."

  There was no paradox at all. The cube remained.

  But the entire rest of the Universe, professors and all, vanished.

  * * *

  Contents

  SENTRY

  By Fredric Brown

  He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and he was fifty thousand light-years from home.

  A strange blue sun gave light and the gravity, twice what he was used to, made every movement difficult.

  But in tens of thousands of years this part of war hadn't changed. The flyboys were fine with their sleek spaceships and their fancy weapons. When the chips are down, though, it was still the foot soldier, the infantry, that had to take the ground and hold it, foot by bloody foot. Like this damned planet of a star he'd never heard of until they'd landed him there. And now it was sacred ground because the aliens were there too. The aliens, the only other intelligent race in the Galaxy ... cruel, hideous and repulsive monsters.

  Contact had been made with them near the center of the Galaxy, after the slow, difficult colonization of a dozen thousand planets; and it had been war at sight; they'd shot without even trying to negotiate, or to
make peace.

  Now, planet by bitter planet, it was being fought out.

  He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and the day was raw with a high wind that hurt his eyes. But the aliens were trying to infiltrate and every sentry post was vital.

  He stayed alert, gun ready. Fifty thousand light-years from home, fighting on a strange world and wondering if he'd ever live to see home again.

  And then he saw one of them crawling toward him. He drew a bead and fired. The alien made that strange horrible sound they all make, then lay still.

  He shuddered at the sound and sight of the alien lying there. One ought to be able to get used to them after a while, but he'd never been able to. Such repulsive creatures they were, with only two arms and two legs, ghastly white skins and no scales.

  * * *

  Contents

  TWELVE TIMES ZERO

  By Howard Browne

  Chapter I

  They brought him into one of the basement rooms. He moved slowly and with a kind of painful dignity, as a man moves on his way to the firing squad. A rumpled shock of black hair pointed up the extreme pallor of a gaunt face, empty at the moment of all expression. Harsh light from an overhead fixture winked back from tiny beads of perspiration dotting the waxen skin of his forehead.

  The three men with him watched him out of faces as expressionless as his own. They were ordinary men who wore ordinary clothing in an ordinary way, yet in the way they moved and in the way they stood you knew they were hard men who were in a hard and largely unpleasant business.

  One of them motioned casually toward a straight-backed chair almost exactly in the center of the room. "Sit there, Cordell," he said.

  A quiet voice, not especially deep, yet it seemed to bounce off the painted concrete walls.

  Wordless, the young man obeyed. Sitting, he seemed as stiff and uncompromising as before. The man who had spoken made a vague gesture and the overhead light went out, replaced simultaneously by strong rays from a spotlight aimed full at the eyes of the seated figure. Involuntarily the young man's head turned aside to avoid the searing brilliance, but a hand came out of the wall of darkness and jerked it back again.

  "Just to remind you," the quiet voice continued conversationally, "I'm Detective Lieutenant Kirk, Homicide Bureau." A pair of hands thrust a second chair toward the circle of light. Kirk swung it around and dropped onto the seat, resting his arms along the back, facing the man across a distance of hardly more than inches.

  In the pitiless glare of the spotlight Cordell's cheekbones stood out sharply, and under his deepset eyes were dark smudges of exhaustion. His rigid posture, his blank expression, his silence--these seemed not so much indications of defiance as they did the result of some terrible and deep-seated shock.

  "Let's go over it again, Cordell," Kirk said.

  The young man swallowed audibly against the silence. One of his hands twitched, came up almost to his face as though to shield his eyes, then dropped limply back, "That light--" he mumbled.

  "--stays on," Kirk said briskly. "The quicker you tell us the answers, the quicker we all relax. Okay?"

  Cordell shook his head numbly, not so much in negation as an effort to clear the fog from his tortured mind. "I told you," he cried hoarsely. "What more do you want? Yesterday I told you the whole thing." His voice began to border on hysteria. "What good's my trying to tell you if you won't listen? How's a guy supposed--"

  "Then try telling it straight!" Kirk snapped. "You think you're fooling around with half-wits? Sure; you told us. A crazy pack of goof-ball dreams about a blonde babe clubbing two grown people to death, then disappearing in a ball of blue light! You figure on copping a plea on insanity?"

  "It's the truth!" Cordell shouted. "As God hears me, it's true!" Suddenly he buried his face in his hands and long tearing sobs shook his slender frame.

  * * * * *

  One of the other men reached out as though to drag the young man's face back into the withering rays of the spotlight, but Kirk motioned him away. Without haste the Lieutenant fished a cigar from the breast pocket of his coat and began almost leisurely to strip away its cellophane wrapper. A kitchen match burst into flame under the flick of a thumb nail and a cloud of blue tobacco smoke writhed into the cone of hot light.

  "Cordell," Kirk said mildly.

  Slowly the young man's shoulders stopped their shaking, and after a long moment his wan, tear-stained face came back into the light. "I--I'm sorry," he mumbled.

  Kirk waved away the layer of smoke hanging between them. He said wearily, "Let's try it once more. Step by step. Maybe this time...." He let the sentence trail off, but the inference was clear.

  An expression of hopeless resignation settled over Cordell's features. "Where do you want me to start?"

  "Take it from five o'clock the afternoon it happened."

  The tortured man wet his lips. "Five o'clock was when my shift went off at the plant. The plant, in case you've forgotten, is the Ames Chemical Company, and I'm a foreman in the Dry Packaging department."

  "Save your sarcasm," Kirk said equably.

  "Yeah. I changed clothes and punched out around five-fifteen. Juanita had called me about four and said to pick her up at Professor Gilmore's laboratory."

  "At what time?"

  "No special time. Just when I could get out there. We were going to have dinner and take in a movie. No particular picture; she said we'd pick one out of the paper at dinner."

  "Go on."

  "Well, it must've been about quarter to six when I got out to the University. I parked in front of the laboratory wing and went in at the main entrance. I walked down the corridor to the Professor's office. His typist was knocking out some letters and there were a couple of students hanging around waiting for him to show up. How about a smoke, Lieutenant?"

  Kirk nodded to one of the men behind him and a package of cigarettes was extended to the man under the light. A match was proffered and the young man ignited the white tube, his hands shaking badly.

  The Lieutenant crossed his legs the other way, "Let's hear the rest of it, friend."

  "What for?" Bitterness tinged Cordell's voice. "You don't believe a word I'm saying."

  "Up to now I do."

  "Well, I said something or other to Alma--she's the Prof's secretary--and went on through the door to the hall that leads to the private lab. When I got--"

  * * * * *

  Kirk held up a hand. "Wait a minute. Your busting right in on the Professor like that doesn't sound right. Why not wait in the office for your wife?"

  "What for?" Cordell squinted at him in surprise. "He and I get ... got along fine. When Juanita first went to work for him he said to drop in at the lab any time, not to wait in the outer office like a freshman or something."

  "Go ahead."

  "Well...." The young man hesitated. "We're back to the part you don't believe, Officer. I can't hardly believe it myself; but so help me, it's gospel. I saw it!"

  "I'm waiting."

  Cordell said doggedly: "The lab door was open a crack. I heard a woman's voice in there, and it wasn't my wife's. It was a voice like--like cracked ice. You know: cold and kind of ... well ... brittle and--and deadly. That's the only way I can describe it.

  "Anyway, I sort of hesitated there, outside the door. I didn't want to go bulling in on something that wasn't none of my business ... but on the other hand I figured my wife was in there, else Alma would've said so."

  "You hear anything besides this collection of ice cubes?"

  The young man's jaw hardened. "I'm giving it the way it happened. You want the rest, or you want to trade wise cracks?"

  One of the men behind Kirk lunged forward, "Why, you cheap punk--"

  Kirk stopped him with an arm. "I'll handle this, Miller." To Cordell: "I asked you a question. Answer it."

  "I heard Professor Gilmore. Only a couple words, then two quick flashes of light lit up the frosted glass door panel. That's when I heard these two thumps like when somebody falls do
wn. I shoved open the door fast ... and right then I saw her!"

  Kirk nodded for no apparent reason and was careful about knocking a quarter inch of ash off his cigar. "Tell me about her."

  The young man's hands were shaking again. He sucked at his cigarette and let the smoke come out with his words: "She was clear over on the other side of the lab ... standing a good two feet off the floor in the middle of a big blue ball of some kind of--of soft fire. Blue fire that sort of pulsed--you know. Anyway, there she was: this hell of a good-looking blonde; looking right smack at me, and there was this funny kind of gun in her hand. She aimed it and I ducked just as this dim flash of light came out of it. Something hit me on the side of the head and I ... well, I guess I blanked out."

  "Then what?"

  "Well, like I said yesterday, I suppose I just naturally came out of it. I'm all spread out on the floor with the damndest headache you ever saw. Over by the window is the Prof and--" he wet his lips--"and Juanita. They're dead, Lieutenant; just kind of all piled up over there ... dead, their heads busted in and the--the--the--"

  * * * * *

  He sat there, his mouth working but no sound coming out, his eyes staring straight into the blazing light, the cigarette smouldering, forgotten, between the first two fingers of his left hand.

  Almost gently Kirk said: "Let's go back to where you were standing outside the door. You heard this woman talking. What did she say?"

  Cordell looked sightlessly down at his hands. "Nothing that made sense. Sounded, near as I can remember, like: 'Twelve times zero'--then some words, or more numbers maybe--I'm not sure--then she said, 'Chained to a two hundred thousand years'--and the Professor said something about his colleges having no idea and he'd warn them--and the blonde said, 'Three in the past five months'--and then something about taking in washing--"